A warm chuckle to
@AlexH. I too have called myself "The Alex" Because, for the first twenty five years of my life I
was the only Alex. No one was named Alex in those days. In a sea of Bills, Joes, Bobs, Daves, Steves and Ricks; I, alone, owned my name.
Oh, sure, I had a Great Uncle in Canada with my name, (met him once when I was an infant)and my Twice-Great Grandfather was my namesake. (Never met the man... he'd been dead for a while)
I blame the insufferably cute, Michael J Fox, as the sweet and clever "Alex Keaton" on the '80's sitcom Family Ties for blowing my copyright. By the turn of the '90's, I couldn't go to a park, or a supermarket without some young Mother shrieking
my name at some intransigent brat. Alexis, Alexandra, Alexander, gender notwithstanding, suddenly every kid in the neighborhood has had my name thrust upon them.
So, yeah, if a forum already has too many Alexes, and won't accept any version of Alex, as a username, try "TheAlex;" because there can be only one.
Skewing back on topic, here... In the early days of the www, I got onto the Asimov's/Analog magazine forums early enough (ca 1995) to snag username "Alex." No more, no less. For Fifteen years, I loitered about that place as "Alex." (The one and only)
Within that venue, there was a friendly fellow using his actual name: "David [I don't even remember his surname]" When that forum began to crumble into a sea of political flames and inept, irrational, unresponsive and anonymous Moderation and we were all getting a bit frantic about losing our long beloved community; David changed his username and declared himself "The Evil Overlord" in protest.
I declared that David was not the Evil Overlord of me, and changed my username to "Alex, The Great and Terrible." (Because L Frank Baum wrote, "I am Oz, the Great and Terrible." I regard the blasphemous alteration by MGM and subsequent revivals to "The Great and Powerful" to be a weak abomination of a once awe inspiring Title.( As the current steward of a four-generation, family collection of 42 Oz books, I cannot condone such libelous license.))
Thus, when those forums vanished you can blame DEO for rescuing me from a life raft on the lonely sea of woe, and inviting me to Chrons.
I had difficulties getting the Chrons software to accept any reasonable variation on my plain name, so I went with the full title; except there were too many characters, written out, to fit. So I went with the initials. It never occurred to me, until it was too late, about the Gin and Tonic bit.
